And Now For Something A Little Different....

I’d like to claim that after a small number of years spent immersing myself in music that I can tell my arse from my Elbow but it would be fair to say that some pretty gaping holes in my musical knowledge remain. I’m not talking about Manic Street Preachers trivia circa 1992 -1996 but entire genres that to date have passed me by entirely. One such genre is jazz. From the outside looking in there’s a lot to admire in the musicianship, timelessness and general air of effortless cool that jazz sustains itself on. Therefore, when I saw ‘1959: The Year That Changed Jazz’ pop up on the BBC iPlayer, now seemed as good a time as any to pick up a basic understanding of such an all encompassing sound. The program focussed around four classic albums released from that year, in this blog I’ll aim to give you another blaggers guide to all four and hopefully we’ll expand our horizons together.

Miles Davis ‘Kind Of Blue’ was 1959’s biggest release in jazz and quite probably in music as a whole. The album was recorded virtually from scratch in seven hours of recording time with all tracks bar ‘So What’ making the LP’s final cut on first take. ‘Kind Of Blue’ represented Davis’ desire to be the master of his instrument (the trumpet) after cutting his teeth in the band of Charlie Parker, a man widely regarded as a pioneer of bebop. Having joined Parker’s band at the tender age of eighteen though, Davis departed for pastures new in search of a less cluttered sound. ‘Kind Of Blue’ was founded on the mantra more is less and has subsequently become the biggest selling Jazz album of all time.

The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s ‘Time Out’ similarly played host to jazz’s biggest selling single of all time ‘Take 5’. The album drew it’s inspiration from various tours Brubeck and his band had made around the reaches of Soviet Russia, where the US government hoped the American values distilled in jazz would spawn anti-communist sentiment. The jury remains well and truly out on whether Brubeck’s mission was a success but in the midst of hitting the Red Army with serenades of smooth harmonics the band learnt to experiment in vastly different time signatures to those in currency at the time. Each song on ‘Time Out’ was written with a different tempo and time signature, yet against all odds such an experimental record was welcomed with open arms by middle America. Such success came much to the consternation of the jazz hierarchy, who saw Brubeck as cashing in on the genre by watering down black music for popular consumption.

Charles Mingus’ ‘Mingus Ah Um’ represents the most provocative LP of those featured in the program and only one of four albums he released in 1959. Believing that there was no past, no present or future in music, only now. Mingus wrote about what was close to his heart by incorporating the best of what had been with his own unique vision. In particular, album track ‘Fables of Faubus’ provided a raucous accompaniment to the horrifying scenes that had greeted the end of segregation at Little Rock High School in Arkansas. Racism was the only subject matter to catch the ire of Mingus though, his temper has become so legendary that one light he smashed at the Village Vanguard Jazz Club in New York remains unchanged since it was first broken over fifty years ago.

Last but not least came Ornette Coleman’s ‘The Shape Of Jazz To Come’, a particularly outlandish title for a particularly provocative player. Ornette’s debut on the NY jazz scene has become legendary purely for the number of people he pissed off by rocking up with his plastic white saxophone and daring to play with such ferocity. Such a audacious attitude originally leat to the LP’s under appreciation in its own time, nevertheless programme contributor Lou Reed, of Velvet Underground and ‘Perfect Day’ fame, described the track ‘Lonely Woman’ as one of his favourite songs ever. Rolling Stone magazine even ranked the record at number 246 on their list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

All albums are hyperlinked to the website where you can purchase their cheapest incarnation, so if you’re feeling adventurous, a gamble on something new won’t set you back more than a fiver.